There are times when a person needs to approach a new contact or person that they have not communicated with previously. There are many possible methods or channels for initiating a contact including using one of the communication means of email, instant messaging (IM), landline phone, cellular phone, Internet Protocol (IP) phone, scheduling a meeting, voice mail, SMS (short message service), fax, etc. It is a problem for a person to select the appropriate form of communication means for a particular contact.
Known systems enable a prospective contact to state a preferred contact method in an online directory. A problem is that this field should be filled manually and this may not have been done by the contact and the field may not default to the most appropriate contact method.
Moreover, the appropriate contact method can be different depending on the person who is trying to initiate the contact. For instance, the Vice President of a company may call directly the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), while engineers should write an email to the CEO's assistant. There are two factors which should be considered when choosing the best method for communication: the fastest and most efficient available method; and the appropriate, socially acceptable method.
Choosing the wrong method may impose unnecessary delay which could have been avoided or may result in an unwelcome interruption for the recipient. For example, a call directly to a CEO's cell phone is usually not the desirable, socially accepted and effective method.
Recently, rich presence oriented methods for call routing have been introduced in which a person's availability and the preferred number to call is identified using various forms of presence information, such as location, device availability, caller and callee identities, etc. Such methods require users to manage groups of contacts manually along with the contact method and availability preferences, which becomes a drawback.